Pentagon - Shine (Review)

My First Thought: AN AMAZING BOP!!

This song came out two months ago and was very popular, causing the group Pentagon to gain many new fans, or Universe, the official name of their fan club. They debuted in late 2016 with Gorilla but their recent comeback, "Shine", has really thrust them to a new level of popularity and recognition. Unfortunately, the popularity of the song in Korea only started a month after the song released after a number of notable K-pop idols were seen jamming to the song and doing the "hammer dance" choreography. Below is the video showing the choreography video made for the song:

The international popularity of the song also reached a new level when "Shine" scored Pentagon's first Top 10 hit on Billboard's World Digital Song Sales chart in the last week of April. It is not very common that a song will gain late popularity in the Kpop industry, one of the few examples being EXID's "Up & Down" and Momoland's "Bboom Bboom". The group is also set to perform at Newark's Prudential Center next month on June 23 and 24 along with many other big names in the Kpop industry.

Other than the signature "hammer dance" move, the song is also widely appreciated for their minimal hip-hop style and catchy phrases and parts often using repetition. Personally, my attention was captured specifically the little piano melody in the beginning that just seemed like an addicting sound and rang around my head along with the "loser" part of the lyrics in the chorus.

I wasn't really surprised that they had a more heavy and punk hip-hop sound before, because the deep voices of the rappers and their impressive flow indicated that innocent love proclamations weren't all they could do. The second that hooked me to this song was the opening lines rapped by E-Dawn, probably because his voice sounds nothing like you would expect from such a cute looking guy. Another thing that indicated to me of their "darker" past was the sharpness in their moves and the aura of roughness in their movements which couldn't be dimmed despite the cutesy background and pastel colour scheme.

I found that "Gorilla", their debut song, along with other tracks from their previous albums were just as addicting in sound as "Shine" and filled with amazing vocals being shown off. I assume their late rise in popularity is due to the fact that their company, Cube Entertainment, is a relatively small one with less influence with the media, but their fans are certainly dedicated in their support for these 10 talented boys. You can check out this video of a Youtuber reacting to the song:

It's an easy and addicting song to listen to and the MV makes it infinitely better because the choreography is just ON POINT. They just look so cool and laid back while doing each step which can even be seen in their many comeback stages. They are definitely worth checking out and following because the members are very talented and their music is pretty great and improves after every album.